Engineering Colloquium Home
Schedule including this lecture.
Goddard Space Flight Center Engineering Colloquium
Date: Monday, November 18, 2002
With every breath you take, a hundred thousand microscopic specks may swirl into your body. Even the cleanest air on Earth swarms with dust. And the dirtiest air on Earth can be photographed from space, as it swirls in airborne rivers above the planet's surface. What is this stuff? Much of the dust overhead (and under the sofa) is natural, reflecting the fragility of trees, animals, and even rocks. But human industry too releases great tributaries of particles to the air. Finally, lending an exotic whiff to the air around us is a steady rain of space dust, powdered dinosaurs, and perhaps even fragments of long-gone kings.
Hannah Holmes is a science writer living in South Portland, Maine. Her first book, The Secret Life of Dust, (Wiley, August, 2001) was featured on National Public Radio's Fresh Air, on C-SPAN's BookTV, and on the broadcast networks of the UK, Canada, and Australia. Dust was a finalist for the London-based Aventis Prize for Science Books. She has written extensively for magazines and for Discovery Channel Online, where her assignments included a dinosaur hunt in Mongolia's Gobi Desert, a stint at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory, and coverage of a Hubble servicing mission.
Colloquium Committee Sponsor: Dr. Eugene Waluschka
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